No Longer a Bright Young Thing

I’ve wanted to write about turning 65 but find my thoughts are too complicated to slap together. (Confession: I’m enough of a word person that I can usually “slap together” a more or less coherent blog entry in a pretty short time. I think in complete sentences, so all I usually have to do is write them down. Deathless it ain’t, but it gets the job done.)


So here I was on Wilshire Boulevard at 6:20 am the day before my birthday. Will I know how to get to odd places like this when I can no longer make it out the door under my own steam?


And here I was outside Veteran's Hospital, in Westwood. Thinking about how cool this little parcourse is, especially the all-weather elliptical machine. Wishing blessings on our vets and over-the-top success in their rehab.


This is a running blog. So. On the day before my birthday I ran. On my birthday I ran. The day after my birthday I didn’t run and felt so depressed I kept looking in messy drawers to see if somehow I’d left a gun in one that I’d forgotten about. The following day (today) I ran five in the morning, going out before dawn. All day I’ve been a different person than I was yesterday.

Point is, part of my chagrin at turning 65 is that I know the day is coming when my most reliable connection to happiness, that is, running, will not be possible for me. There are a lot of other factors contributing to the chagrin, but the inevitable loss of my running life is the biggest one. Running is more than the old left-right. Running is the badge I wear that proclaims me as a living, functioning being—a viable person with energy and enthusiasm for moving.

I know, I know, I probably have many running years left in me. I invite you to look over the results from any recent race you might want to choose. Look them over carefully and tell me how many 70-year-old women you see. Two? One? NONE? Whereas you’ll find a higher number of 60-to-65-year-olds. It’s that last half decade that gets us, that sees our light dimming to gray and then to dark.

Today I do feel happy, do feel optimistic. But also, I do feel realistic. Man, I hate getting old. So there you go.

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